The Lazy Vegan

Get ready for the revolution! Okay, maybe that's a bit extreme. But, as a serious chocolate lover who is vegan and cutting down on sugar, finding any kind of chocolate that I can eat is simple a miracle. Oh, there are lots of vegan products with chocolate. Most are so laden with sugar grams that you might as well just suck on sugar cane like the old commercials.

My sister bought some Amber Lyn Chocolates when they had a food tasting display at CostCo. She was kind enough to share one Dark Chocolate Bar with me. Yeah, just one! Sheesh, what a sister.

The Dark Chocolate bars are dairy free and sweetened with wheat based maltitol. They contain 15 grams of sugar alcohol and no sugar grams.

After trying that first tidbit, I need more! I bought a mixed case from their website. I tried the Dark Chocolate, Dark Hazelnut Chocolate, Dark Mint Chocolate, and Dark Hazelnut Chocolate with Almonds. While all were tasty, the Dark Mint Chocolate was by far the best. I really couldn't taste the difference between the Dark Chocolate and the Dark Hazelnut Chocolate. The Almond version as slightly less sugar alcohol grams than the other bars.

I'm not sure how sugar grams and sugar alcohol grams compare. I know the body converts them differently. I am dividing the bars into the threes and eating a chunk at a time, so that's only 5 sugar alcohol grams.

If you'd like to check them out, here's the website: http://www.amberlynchocolates.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=cb

I'm trying to cut back on my sugar grams for health reasons. It sounds like a smart thing to do. I love breakfast cereal. I can't eat anything hot in the morning. Cereal fills me up.

So, I set out on the Internet and at the grocery store to find low or no sugar cereals. Oh, man! What a challenge!

First, anything labelled "no sugar" doesn't mean it's healthy. Most of the time they replaced the sugar with two or three different sweeteners. Because of this, some of the healthy cereals had more sugar grams than your average overly sweetened children's cereal.

Second, finding low sugar and no dairy was next to impossible. Evidentally, they add dairy to cereal to replace some of the taste lost from the lack of sugar. That's what I'm guessing.

I eventually found four cereals that met my criteria of low sugar grams and dairy free/vegan. Just four! They were Kashi 7 Whole Grain Puffs, Rice Puffs (a couple of brands), Cheerios (1 gram per bowl), and Spoon Sized Shredded Wheat.

Well, I already knew I liked Cheerios. Rice Puffs are fine if I mix them with something, otherwise, I have to eat 3 bowls to get full. I haven't tried the shredded wheat yet, but the Kashi was a pleasant suprise. It's got puffs but also crunchy grains. It's very tasty.

If you've found a low sugar, vegan cereal, post the name in the comments. I am eager to find enough alternatives to bring variety back into my diet.

Labels: cereal, Cheerios, Kashi, low sugar, Rice Puffs, Shredded Wheat, sugar free, vegan

I would like to wish all my readers a Happy 2008! May it be a prosperous, enjoyable year filled will whatever you want it to be.

Have you set health goals for yourself for the new year? I plan to cut my sugar intake and find healthy snacks. My biggest downfall is I can't really eat fruit and I'm addicted to chocolate. So, I will be searching high and low for low sugar chocolate snacks.

I hope you will have a happy and healthy new year!

I'm not sure what's going on in the protein/energy bar aisle. First, NuGo doubled the amount of sugar in their bars. Now Luna has jumped on the bandwagon.

Nutz Over Chocolate used to have 9 grams of sugar per bar. It now has 12 grams. The Caramel Nut Brownie used to have 11 grams. It now has 14 grams.

I don't really understand why they are increasing sugar levels when the bars tasted good right from the start. I used to be able to eat two Nuts Over Chocolate bars and keeping my snacking sugar grams under 20 for the day. But, now I can only have one. Two bars equal 24 grams of sugar! Two brownies come out to 28 grams!

I really wish they would revert back. They had a good snack that tasted great. Now they've got a very sweet, sugary tasting snack that you have to be careful of overdoing. Bummer!

After being vegan for several years, I finally bought tempeh. Have you tried it? It's a fermented soy product that mimics meat in recipes. It can be straight soy bean or it can be mixed with grains.

I don't miss meat, but sometimes I like something else in my sandwiches. I bought LightLife's Three Grain Tempeh and gave it a try.

It looks a little strange, but it's really versatile. I took a hunk, crumbled it into my vegetables, and heated in the microwave. It came out really good! The Three Grain has a kind of grainy/nutty taste.

It freezes well. I put small chunks in freezer bags, then take what I need.


I haven't tried it but it might make a good pattie.

If you're looking for a little more texture to your meals, something on the line of ground beef or tuna (in texture, not taste!), then give this a try. It's a good filler!

If you are addicted to the NuGo Double Dark Chocolate bars like I am, take a look at the label. They've almost doubled the amount of sugar in each bar.

The Double Dark Chocolate bars were sooooo good. I loved the fact that they only had 8 grams of sugar. If I wanted to be greedy, I could eat two and it wasn't that big of a deal. Now they have 15 grams of sugar, so you have to be careful. If you feel like two, that's a whopping 30 grams of sugar!

Why did they need to increase the sugar content? It makes no sense to mess with something that already tastes great. They should have left well enough alone.

I guess it's back to Luna bars since the Nutz Over Chocolate only has 9 grams of sugar.

Wishing everyone a very happy 4th of July filled with great taste of veggie BBQ :)